PHYSICALISM, DUALISM AND THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM. A Dissertation. Submitted to the Graduate School. of the University of Notre Dame

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1 PHYSICALISM, DUALISM AND THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Notre Dame in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Dolores G. Morris Alvin Plantinga, Director Graduate Program in Philosophy Notre Dame, Indiana December 2010

2 PHYSICALISM, DUALISM AND THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM Abstract by Dolores G. Morris In this dissertation, I examine the implications of the problem of mental causation and what David Chalmers has dubbed the hard problem of consciousness for competing accounts of the mind. I begin, in Chapter One, with a critical analysis of Jaegwon Kim s Physicalism, or Something Near Enough. (2005) There, I maintain that Kim s ontology cannot adequately address both the problem of mental causation and the hard problem of consciousness. In Chapter Two, I examine the causal pairing problem for substance dualism. I demonstrate both that the substance dualist can respond to the argument at no great cost, and that the pairing problem applies, with equal force, to the irreducible qualia posited on Kim s account. Chapters Three and Four are devoted to what I take to be the central argument against any kind of dualism: the causal exclusion argument. In Chapter Three, I examine dualistic responses to the exclusion argument that grant the causal closure of the physical world. I note that these responses, though technically adequate, are nevertheless theoretically unpalatable. In addition to requiring the dualist to adopt unconventional

3 Dolores G. Morris attitudes towards causation, responses of this variety also have the unfortunate result of rendering libertarian freedom impossible. Finally, in Chapter Four, I turn my attention to the question of causal closure. I maintain that the causal closure of the physical world, though widely affirmed, is nevertheless extraordinarily difficult to support. In light of Hempel s Dilemma, causal closure is either false, compatible with dualistic interaction, or unacceptably stipulative. There is, I maintain no causal closure principle up to the tasks required by the causal exclusion argument. For that reason, I conclude that the dualist ought not to worry about causal closure.

4 CONTENTS Chapter One: Physicalism and the Mind-Body Problem: A Critical Analysis of Jaegwon Kim s Functional Reduction The Mind Body Problem(s) The Failures of Alternative Physicalist Accounts Nonreductive Physicalism Identity Theories Reduction via Bridge Laws Reduction via Functional Definitions Functional Definitions: The Qualia Problem Kim s Functional Reductions: Tying up the Loose Ends The Question of Qualia Supervenience The Causal Exclusion Problem for Functionally Reduced Mental Properties The Problem of (Irreducible) Consciousness Conclusion Chapter Two: Substance Dualism and the Pairing Problem Causal Pairing and Humean Causation The Pairing Problem Stated Responding to the Pairing Problem Finding, or Not Finding, a Pairing Relationship Causation and Intentionality Abandoning Cartesian Dualism The Qualia Pairing Problem The Problem Stated Objections and Responses Conclusion 94 Chapter Three: Substance Dualism and the Causal Exclusion Argument Background Considerations The Causal Exclusion Argument Against Substance Dualism Embracing Overdetermination: Eugene Mills Objections to Mills s Overdeterminism..108 ii

5 2.3 Final Reflections on Mills: An Analogy Against Exclusion E.J. Lowe on Simultaneous Causation Objections to Lowe s Simultaneity Account Closure: Causal vs. Explanatory Some Thoughts on Freedom Freedom, Closure and Completeness A Third Alternative: E.J. Lowe on Fact Causation Objections to Lowe s Second Approach Reflections on Lowe s Second Alternative: Explanatory and Causal Closure Revisited Concluding Thoughts Chapter Four: Choosing Not to Worry About Closure Closure and the Causal Exclusion Argument On Scientific Respectability Evidence of Causal Closure: From Completeness to Closure Closure and Completeness Revisited Hempel s Dilemma The Dilemma Applied The First Horn: Andrew Melnyk s Physicalism The First Horn: Relevant Rivals The First Horn: A More Relevant Rival The Second Horn Giving Content to Future Physics The First Horn Revisited The Second Horn: Innapropriate Extension Taking Stock of Closure The Causal Closure of the Physical M The Causal Closure of the Physical D The Causal Closure of the Physical W Final Thoughts on Closure 193 Conclusion.195 Works Cited iii

6 CHAPTER ONE: PHYSICALISM AND THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF JAEGWON KIM S FUNCTIONAL REDUCTION In Physicalism, or Something Near Enough, Jaegwon Kim presents an account of the mind according to which most, but not all, mental properties can be reduced to physical ones via functional definitions. 1 While the position at which he arrives fails, ultimately, to be a wholly physicalist account, he nevertheless maintains that it is the physicalist s best bet when it come to resolving the mind-body problem. Furthermore, because Kim also argues for a rejection of substance dualism, he maintains that this position is really anyone s best chance at resolving the mind body problem. In what follows, I wish to examine the first of these claims. I will begin in 1 with a statement of the mind-body problem, though as we shall see the problem turns out to be, instead, a collection of related problems. In 2, I will present Kim s treatment and eventual rejection of a series of physicalist responses to the mind-body problem(s). I will offer a reconstruction of Kim s positive account, physicalist reduction via functional definitions, in 3. The remainder of this chapter, 4-8, will 1 Jaegwon Kim Physicalism or Something Near Enough. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005) 1

7 consist of a critical analysis of Kim s position. In 4 I will consider a series of questions that are, as of yet, unanswered on Kim s account. I suggest that the answers to these questions will be critically important to an overall assessment of Kim s position. In 5 I pose one additional question: namely, whether or not irreducible qualia can be said to supervene on physical properties given Kim s ontology. 6 and 7 will be devoted to assessing the success of Kim s account in treating both aspects of the mind-body problem for physicalism: the problem of mental causation, and the problem of consciousness. I will conclude in 8. Physicalism, or Something Near Enough presents a carefully articulated and boldly argued account of the mind. The arguments are impressive, both in scope and in clarity, and ought not to be treated lightly. Nevertheless, I wish to dispute Kim s claim that functional reductions are the key to resolving the mind-body problem. I will argue, instead, that both the problem of mental causation and the problem of consciousness remain problematic given a functionally reductive account. Ultimately, I will suggest that a person physicalist or otherwise who is interested in responding to the mind-body problem ought to seek alternative means. 1. The Mind Body Problem(s) Kim begins the first chapter of Physicalism, or Something Near Enough by noting that, strictly speaking, there is no single mind-body problem. Instead, the so-called mind-body problem is best understood as: A cluster of connected problems about the relationship between mind and matter. What these problems are depends on a broader framework of philosophical and 2

8 scientific assumptions and presumptions within which the questions are posed and possible answer are formulated. (7) A substance dualist, for example, affirms the immateriality of the mind. Most substance dualists are also interactionist dualists, which is to say they affirm two-way causal interaction between the mind and the body. For an interactionist dualist, then, the principle mind-body problem is the problem of accounting for causal interaction between an immaterial substance and a material one. Absent some account of how an immaterial substance could act causally upon a material one, the substance dualist will face difficulties in attempting to explain mental causation. For a contemporary physicalist, however, there is no such problem. A physicalist need not explain the possibility of causal interaction between diverse substances because the physicalist affirms a monism of substance. This is not to say that there is no mind-body problem pertinent to physicalism, only that the nature of the problem (or problems, as it were) depends upon the broader ontological context in which it is raised. According to Kim, the mind-body problem for a contemporary physicalist is comprised of two separate, but related, issues: the problem of mental causation, and the problem of consciousness. 2 The problem of mental causation, as formulated against a physicalist, can take a variety of forms. Broadly stated, the question is this: How can the mind exercise its causal powers in a causally closed physical world? (13) Because the mind, in this context, no longer refers to a distinct type of substance, this question is more often framed in terms of mental properties or mental events than it is in terms of the mind as such. 2 Again, it seems unlikely that there is only one problem of mental causation. Still, there is a problem of mental causation here, and a distinct but related problem of consciousness. 3

9 Given that the physical domain is causally closed, how can mental properties exert causal influence in the physical world? How can a mental event be the cause of some physical event? How can mentality, however construed, be causally relevant? This is the first component of the physicalist s mind-body problem. The second component, the problem of consciousness, centers upon the mere presence of mentality in the physical world. As Kim writes, Why is there, and how can there be, such a thing as the mind, or consciousness, in a physical world? (13) What Kim calls the problem of consciousness is essentially what Chalmers has dubbed the hard problem of consciousness. 3 In The Conscious Mind, Chalmers offers the following illustration of the hard problem of consciousness: When someone strikes middle C on the piano, a complex chain of events is set into place. Sound vibrates in the air and a wave travels to my ear. The wave is processed and analyzed into frequencies inside the ear, and a signal is sent to the auditory cortex All this is not so hard to understand in principle. But why should this be accompanied by an experience? And why, in particular, should it be accompanied by that experience, with its characteristic rich tone and timbre? 4 This problem, itself twofold, is the problem of consciousness. Why is there phenomenal experience at all? Why does phenomenal experience occur in the precise way that it does, rather than in some other way? For contemporary reductive physicalists physicalists who believe that all mental properties or states can be reduced to physical ones the problem of consciousness poses two distinct challenges. The first is the task of closing the explanatory gap between 3 David I. Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) (p4 and elsewhere) More specifically, Kim writes that the problem of the explanatory gap is what David Chalmers has called the hard problem of consciousness. (Kim 2005, p.93-94) Kim s problem of consciousness seems also to include the predictive, or epistemic, gap. Still, the basic difficulty is the same: how are we to reconcile phenomenal consciousness with a causally closed, physical world? 4 (Chalmers 1996, p.5) 4

10 phenomenal consciousness and the physical world. 5 This is essentially the problem which we have been discussing; it asks why consciousness exists, at all and as it does. 6 The second challenge is centered upon what Kim calls the predictive (or epistemic) gap between consciousness and the physical world. Kim writes As the emergentists claimed, it seems possible for us to know all about the physiology of a creature, say Thomas Nagel s famously inscrutable bats, 7 but have no idea of the qualitative character of its inner experience. (94) If reductive physicalism is true, then complete knowledge of the physical properties of a creature should suffice for knowledge of the mental properties of that creature. Given the fundamental physical features of a bat, we ought to be able to conclude the nature of any mental features that that bat might have. Yet this is not the case. Instead, any predictions that we make about the conscious states of animals are based largely upon observed correlations between physical states and conscious ones; in addition to the physical evidence, we rely upon observed phenomenal evidence as well. An adequate reductive physicalist account of the mind, then, should be able to close this gap. It should give us the resources to ascribe mental properties by appealing only to a purely physical base domain. 5 This phrase was coined by Joseph Levine in Materialism and Qualia: The Explanatory Gap, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 64 (1983): (Cited in Kim 2005, p.93) 6 Henceforth, with Chalmers, I will use the term consciousness to refer to phenomenal consciousness what Kim and others call qualia. One tends to think primarily about colors, sounds and the like when one hears qualia. I maintain, with Chalmers, that phenomenal consciousness is far more widespread than this would indicate; there are qualitative aspects to nearly all of our mental states. As such, I prefer the term consciousness and, unless otherwise stated, will use it to refer only to the phenomenal aspects of mental states. 7 Thomas Nagel, What Is It Like To Be a Bat? Philosophical Review 83 (1974): (Cited in Kim 2005, p.94) 5

11 2 The Failures of Alternative Physicalist Accounts There are, of course, a variety of physicalist responses to both the problem of mental causation and the problem of consciousness. According to Kim, the most successful account and, perhaps, the only successful account is one whereby the mental is reduced via functional definitions. We will discuss this method of reduction in detail in 3. Before doing so, in order to fully grasp the success of functionally reductive definitions, it will be helpful to examine the failures which Kim takes to undermine alternative physicalist accounts. The scope of this chapter does not allow for an in depth examination of each of these rival positions, but it will be useful to consider the reasons on account of which Kim deems these positions to be failures. With this in mind, we will be in a better position to appreciate the merits that Kim ascribes to a functionally reductive account. Nonreductive physicalism, physicalist reduction via a posteriori identities and physicalism which invokes bridge law reductions all offer responses to the mind-body problem. On Kim s estimation, these responses all fail. 2.1 Nonreductive Physicalism writes: Nonreductive physicalism, Kim notes, can be difficult to classify precisely. He There is no consensus on exactly how nonreductive physicalism is to be formulated, for the simple reason that there is no consensus either how physicalism is to be formulated or how we should understand reduction. (33) 6

12 Despite differences of detail, all (or nearly all) nonreductive physicalists, Kim notes, will affirm the following three positions: the supervenience of the mental on the physical, the irreducibility of the mental to the physical, and the causal efficaciousness of the mental in the physical world. According to Kim, these three theses taken in conjunction with some basic claims of physicalism form an incompatible set, ultimately undermining the tenability of a nonreductive physicalist position. (21-22) Mind-body supervenience can take a variety of forms, but the supervenience that Kim takes to be central to a nonreductive position is a version of strong supervenience. (This is in contrast to weak supervenience, which will be discussed later in this chapter.) He defines it as follows: Supervenience: Mental properties strongly supervene on physical/biological properties. That is, if any system s instantiates a mental property M at t, there necessarily exists a physical property P such that s instantiates P at t, and necessarily anything instantiating P at any time instantiates M at that time. (33) What is crucial about strong supervenience is the claim that the relationship between M and P holds necessarily; not only is it the case that instances of P must always be instances of M in the actual world, but in any possible world containing instances of P, those instances will be instances of M as well. 8 Furthermore, on Kim s interpretation of strong supervenience, this covariance should be understood as an indication of the ontological dependence of M on P. He writes, I take supervenience as an ontological thesis involving the idea of dependence Supervenience, therefore, is not a mere claim of covariation 8 This is not to say that M is perfectly correlated with one and only one P. Strong supervenience requires that any instantiation of M be an instantiation of some P, and that any instantiation of that P must (necessarily) be an instantiation of M as well. If a mental property has multiple supervenience bases, then there will be no single P that is coextensive with M. 7

13 between mental and physical properties; it includes a claim of existential dependence of the mental on the physical. (34) While one could coherently affirm supervenience without affirming this stronger dependence claim if, for example, one held the covariation to be the result of preestablished harmony, or of the dependence of the physical on the mental Kim notes that a physicalist should be willing to adopt this weightier position. Most nonreductive physicalists, then, are committed to the claim that all mental properties correlate with and depend upon some physical property or other. At the same time, nonreductive physicalists of course reject the possibility of reducing mental properties to physical properties. They hold instead that, for any mental property M, there is no physical property P such that P is identical to M. They further deny that any physical property P is coextensive with some mental property M. 9 Indeed it is the apparent presence of multiple physical supervenience bases for any given mental property that drives many physicalists to adopt a nonreductive approach. 10 Finally, nonreductive physicalists affirm the causal efficacy of the mental in a physical world. That is, they are committed to the reality of mental causation. Despite this commitment, Kim ultimately concludes that a nonreductive physicalist account of the mind cannot accommodate mental causation. Over the years, Kim has offered a series of causal exclusion arguments in favor of this conclusion, 9 Depending on how properties are individuated, these two claims can collapse into one, but they need not. There are plenty of reasons for thinking that two distinct properties might nevertheless be coextensive. One need not accept, for example, that all impossible properties are in fact the same one impossible property. Being a round square seems to be a different property from that of being an unmarried bachelor. Likewise, contingently coextensive properties such as the property of being human and that of being a featherless biped might not have been coextensive. They, too, seem to be coextensive yet distinct properties. 10 For an early statement of the Multiple Realization Argument, see: Hilary Putnam, Psychological Predicates. in W.H. Capitan and D.D. Merrill (eds.), Art, Mind, and Religion. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1967) 8

14 culminating in the Supervenience Argument found in Physicalism, or Something Near Enough. 11 This argument will be discussed in detail in Chapter Three. For now, it will suffice to note the broad outline of the argument, which centers upon the following two metaphysical theses: Exclusion. No single event can have more than one sufficient cause occurring at any given time unless it is a genuine case of causal overdetermination. (42) Closure. If a physical event has a cause that occurs at t, it has a physical cause that occurs at t. (43) The latter thesis, the causal closure of the physical, is a central tenet of physicalism. The precise statement may vary, but most if not all physicalists affirm something along the lines of Kim s closure principle. The former thesis, the exclusion principle, is a claim about the nature of causation. 12 Here the claim is that, apart from the occasional coincidence in which two wholly independent and unrelated causal chains manage to simultaneously bring about a single effect, any given event must have one, and only one, sufficient cause at any given time t. This principle, though widely affirmed, is not universally accepted among physicalists, particularly those of a nonreductive persuasion. We will examine some of the ways that it has been rejected in Chapter Three. For now, we will bracket these concerns and grant both Closure and Exclusion. We are, at last, in a position to see the tension at the heart of the nonreductive physicalist s account. The nonreductive physicalist asks us to suppose that mental states can be causes of physical events. If this is the case, then for any instance of mental 11 Earlier versions of Kim s argument can be found, for example, in his Making Sense of Emergence, Philosophical Studies, 95 (1999): 3-36 and Mind in the Physical World. (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1998): 37-38, It is not at all clear to me that all, or even most, nonreductive physicalists would affirm Kim s exclusion principle. We will examine some of the ways that this principle can be, and has been, rejected in Chapter Three. 9

15 causation, Closure tells us that there must be a simultaneous instance of purely physical causation culminating in the event that was purportedly also caused by a mental state. Irreducibility tells us that the mental cause and the physical cause cannot be identical. In light of Exclusion, then, it follows that this must be a case of genuine causal overdetermination. Because we began only with the assumption that some instance of mental causation was possible, it follows that any instance of mental causation must be a case of genuine overdetermination. This, claims Kim, is unacceptable. If a mental state is to count as a cause, it must make some causal difference. Yet, in order to cause some physical event P, a mental cause M must somehow ride piggyback on physical causal chains. (48) A world in which physical causes are systematically overdetermined by supervening mental causes is not, claims Kim, a world in which mental causation occurs. Nonreductive physicalism, then, fails to offer an adequate response to the mindbody problem. Even if it could account for the hard problem of consciousness, such a position would not allow for mental causation; both problems are crucial to the mindbody problem for contemporary physicalism. 2.2 Identity Theories In stark contrast to nonreductive physicalism, some physicalists claim that mental properties are not only reducible to, but are in fact identical with physical properties. According to the identity theorist, apparent differences between mental and physical properties are just that they are apparent. In recent years, identity theorists (or type 10

16 physicalists) have looked to Kripkean a posteriori identities as the primary means of explicating this position. 13 In Naming and Necessity, Saul Kripke famously argued for the existence of truths that are both necessary and knowable only a posteriori. To make use of his classic example, he offers the claim Water is H20 as an instance of an a posteriori, necessary truth that we once took to be contingent. Kripke s account relies upon his theory of naming, whereby the referent of a concept is determined by ostension and subsequently maintained via a causal chain of speakers. In the case of water, the referent was determined long before we knew anything about Hydrogen and Oxygen; our concept of water made no mention of, or allusion to, H20. We could never, therefore, have had a priori knowledge of the truth that water is H20. It is for this reason that we took this truth to be a contingent one; although we eventually discovered that H20 is the chemical makeup of the stuff we call water, it seems as if things might have been otherwise. Nevertheless, given that it is in fact H20 that we have been referring to, and that it is in the actual world always H20 that is picked out by water, Kripke maintains that the truth is a necessary one. Water the stuff that is actually the referent of water is H20, and cannot but have been H We are now in a position to see how it is that identity theorists make use of Kripke s a posteriori identity statements: Just as we once believed (wrongly) that water 13 See, for example: Ned Block and Robert Stalnaker, Conceptual Analysis, Dualism, and the Explanatory Gap. Philosophical Review, 108 (1), (1999): See also Christopher S. Hill and Brian P. McLaughlin, There Are Fewer Things in Reality Than Are Dreamt of in Chalmers s Philosophy. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 59(2), (1999): Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980) For a more recent way of understanding a posteriori identities, see David Chalmers account of the two-dimensional framework. (The Conscious Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) pp See also the references listed in fn12. 11

17 was only contingently composed of H20, we now believe (wrongly) that pain is only contingently realized by the firing of C-fibers. Just as Kripke showed us the error of our ways with respect to the first belief, additional a posteriori identities can likewise liberate us from our current source of confusion. True, our concept of pain seems not to have anything to do with C-fibers, or with any kind of neural activity at all. Nevertheless, the referent of pain is something physical, and pain is, therefore, identical to a physical state. The physical world is all there is both with respect to substances and with respect to properties and states. This is the identity theorist s claim. In response to the mind-body problem, then, the identity theorist essentially denies that there is a problem. How can there be consciousness in a physical world? Conscious states are physical states, comprised by physical objects and properties. How can the mind exert causal influence in the causally closed physical world? Mental states are physical states; accordingly any account of physical causation will suffice as an account of mental causation as well. The trouble, according to the identity theorist, is that we have mistakenly believed there to be two kinds of things where, in reality, there is only one. In many ways, it is this rejection of the mind-body problem as a problem that lies at the heart of Kim s criticism of identity theories. First, he notes, any such account will fail to close either the explanatory or the predictive gap between the mind and the body. With respect to the explanatory gap, a posteriori identities can only tell us that there never was a gap to begin with. Suppose we accept the following a posteriori identity: (K) Consciousness = pyramidal cell activity. Then, Kim writes: Given (K), it no longer makes sense to ask how consciousness emerges out of pyramidal cell activity, not from another sort of neural process, or why there is consciousness just when and where these pyramidal cell activities occur. One is the same as the other, and there is nothing here to explain. (117) 12

18 Identities don t explain questions of correlations, they eliminate them. To borrow a phrase from David Chalmers, in positing a posteriori identities between phenomenal mental states and physical ones, the identity theorist fails to take consciousness seriously. In The Conscious Mind, Chalmers suggests that To take consciousness seriously is to accept just this: that there is something interesting that needs explaining, over and above the performance of various functions. 15 This is precisely what the identity theorist denies. When asked why a certain experience correlates with some physical state, she claims that the experience just is a physical state, and that there is nothing more to be explained. The trouble, notes Kim, is that questions of the sort that Chalmers raises seem to be perfectly intelligible. (119) For this reason, anyone inclined toward taking consciousness seriously will simply reject the identities posited by the identity theorist. Absent some independent evidence in favor of the truth of these identities, there mere usefulness will not suffice as an adequate answer to the mind-body problem. 16 Even if the identity theorist could persuasively argue that the explanatory gap is unproblematic, the predictive gap would remain unaddressed. Kripkean identities are a posteriori. By definition, we cannot know the truth of some Kripkean identity without first having observed the relevant correlation. As such, we could never be in a position to posit a Kripkean identity between, say, the neural structure of a bat and some phenomenal experience. We might attempt to infer something about the experience of the bat by appealing to our own experiences, but we do not have the requisite epistemic access 15 (Chalmers 1996, p. 168) 16 For a more detailed treatment of Kim s response to the identity theorist, I refer the reader to Chapter 5 of (Kim 2005). There, Kim examines and rejects arguments based upon inference to the best explanation and explanatory success as insufficiently motivated. 13

19 which we would need in order to posit a genuine Kripkean identity. Consider once again the question posed by the emergentists: Given complete physiological knowledge of a creature, can we predict anything about its phenomenal conscious states? To this question, the identity theorist must respond that no, we cannot. One crucial question then remains: If reductive physicalism is true if all of the facts about the world are reducible to physical facts then why is knowledge of the physical facts insufficient for knowledge of all of the facts? 17 Identity theory, then, cannot respond to the problem of consciousness. Despite the difficulties that result from an attempt to identify all mental states with physical ones, Kim concludes that reduction of some kind is ultimately necessary if the physicalist is to save mental causation. Nonreductive accounts, for reasons we have discussed, must inevitably succumb to systematic overdetermination or the causal impotence of mental states. In light of this, Kim writes If we want robust mental causation, we had better be prepared to take reductionism seriously. (22) That said, reduction can take a variety of forms. One method of reduction, a method that initially drew a great many followers, is reduction of the mental to the physical via bridge laws. 17 For the canonical statement of the so-called Knowledge Argument, see: Frank Jackson s Epiphenomenal Qualia, Philosophical Quarterly 32 (1982):

20 2.3 Reduction via Bridge Laws Bridge law reduction was first suggested by Ernest Nagel in The Structure of Science. 18 On this method, entire theories were to be reduced to more fundamental ones through the bridging of the individual predicates of the higher-level theory to predicates in the base theory. Kim writes, Nagel reduction requires that each primitive predicate, M, of the theory being reduced be connected with a predicate, P, of the base theory in a bridge law (or bridge principle ) of the form: For any x 1, x n, M(x 1, x n ) if and only if P(x 1, x n ). (98) For example, let M be the predicate 57 degrees Celsius and P the predicate motion of speed K. For there to be a true bridge law connecting the two, it must be the case that all objects are 57 degrees Celsius when, and only when, their molecular motion is of speed K. Given this bridge law, M, a predicate in terms of temperature, can be reduced to P, a predicate in terms of molecular motion. When all of the primitive predicates of a theoretical language are bridged in this way to predicates of a more fundamental theory, the higher-level theory can itself be reduced to the more fundamental one. Using the language and laws of the reduction base coupled with the bridge laws, any truth of the higher-level theory including the laws of that theory can now be expressed wholly in the language of the base theory. Suppose, for example, that all of the predicates of sociology were reducible via bridge laws to predicates of biology. Then any law of sociology could be stated purely in biological terms. In this way, sociology itself could be reduced to biology; there would be nothing to sociology over and above the truths of biology. 18 (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1961), Ch. 11. Cited in (Kim 2005, p98.) 15

21 If available, bridge law reductions could offer a response to the problem of mental causation and, to a lesser extent, to the explanatory component of the problem of consciousness. With respect to the former, suppose that all mental predicates were reducible (via bridge laws) to predicates in the language of a completed physics. A solution to the problem of mental causation would, in this case, be rather straightforward. Every instance of mental causation could be restated wholly in the language of physics; mental causation would be but a subspecies of physical causation. Given this scenario, there would be no problem of mental causation. With respect to the problem of consciousness, however, things get a bit more difficult on this account. Consider the question, Why does pain arise whenever C-fibers are firing? 19 In order to answer this question using bridge laws, we must be able to posit a bridge law along the following lines: For all subjects S, S is in pain if and only if S s C-fibers are firing. There is a sense in which such a bridge law could tell us why pain arises whenever C-fibers fire simply stated, because there is a true bridge law correlating the two. Yet there is another, strong sense in which this answer fails to be at all explanatory. Bridge laws are supposed to be contingent, and they are knowable only through empirical means. As such, unlike Kripkean identities, there is nothing incoherent about asking why any given bridge law is true. Indeed, in asking why pain arises whenever C-fibers fire, it seems that this is precisely what we are asking. Kim writes, In using the bridge laws as auxiliary premises of reductive derivations, the Nagelian reductionist is simply assuming exactly what needs to be derived and explained if we are to answer the explanatory questions raised by Huxley, James and the emergentists that is, if we are to close the explanatory gap or solve the hard problem of consciousness. (100) 19 As Kim notes, the pain/c-fiber correlation is the oft-cited product of philosophers fictional neurophysiology. (Kim 2005, p.13) 16

22 Consider a proposed reductive explanation of a particular occurrence of pain. Suppose we want to know why a pinprick to the finger causes the experience of pain. An answer in terms of bridge law reductions will run along the following lines: The event which we describe as a pin prick to the finger can (in principle) be restated entirely in the language of a completed physics. Likewise, the event which we call experiencing pain can be similarly restated. In both cases, we need only appeal to bridge laws linking predicates such as being pricked by a pin and feeling pain to fundamental physical predicates such as, being in physical state S and undergoing the firing of C-fibers. These bridge laws, coupled with a purely physical account of why physical state S causes C-fibers to fire, will suffice as an explanation of why a pin-prick to the finger causes the experience of pain. What will not be explained, however, is the truth of these bridge laws themselves most notably, the bridge law correlating the phenomenal experience of pain with the firing of C-fibers. Instead, in order to get any explanation of an occurrence of pain, the truth of this bridge law will have to be assumed. Bridge law reduction, then, cannot tell us why any particular conscious state correlates with some physical state; at best, it can tell us why this conscious state occurs when it does given that it is so correlated. This is an answer to some question, to be sure, but not to the question posed by the problem of consciousness. Additionally, as Kim notes, reductive explanations in terms of bridge laws are not actually reductive in the right way. After all, any such explanation will have to appeal to bridge laws, and bridge laws cannot be stated entirely in the language of the reduction base. Instead, insofar as they are bridge laws, they must make reference to the predicate to be reduced. Thus, bridge law reductions appeal to a base theory that includes 17

23 predicates of the higher-level theory, a theory comprised of the original reduction base supplemented with the bridge laws. For this reason, bridge law reductions must rely upon the expansion of the base domain, and so are not fully reductive, and must assume the truth of the bridge laws, and so are not explanatory. (99-100) Finally, because bridge laws are only knowable through empirical investigation, bridge law reduction cannot address the predictive component of the problem of consciousness. Like Kripkean identities, bridge laws can only account for correlations between conscious states and physical states once the conscious states have already been observed. Simply stated, no amount of purely physical knowledge could ever generate physical-to-mental bridge laws. For this reason, bridge law reduction will be utterly useless with respect to the predictive problem of consciousness. In attempting to respond to the mind-body problem(s) for contemporary physicalism, nonreductive physicalism, physicalism in terms of a posteriori identities, and reductive physicalism via bridge laws all, according to Kim, fail to address the problem in one form or another. Nonreductive physicalism cannot meet the demands of the problem of mental causation; instead, it collapses into epiphenomenalism or appeals to the systematic overdetermination of mental causes. Kripkean identities can say nothing about the explanatory gap, apart from claiming that there is no such gap, and are incapable of addressing the predictive problem of consciousness. Bridge law reductions are equally impotent in the face of the predictive problem of consciousness, and like Kripkean identities assume the truth of the correlations for which the explanatory problem of consciousness seeks an explanation. If the physicalist is to address the problem of mental causation and the problem of consciousness, she must look elsewhere for a solution. In what follows, we will examine the ability of functional-reductions to do 18

24 this work. According to Kim, functional reductions can provide an answer to the problem of mental causation and to the problem of consciousness (for the most part) in a way that none of these alternatives could. 3.1 Reduction via Functional Definitions Kim s functional reduction is a three-step process. 20 In order to functionally reduce a property, we must first construct a definition of the property in terms of its causal role. Kim uses the example of being a gene as a property that can be reduced in this manner. (101) Being a gene can be defined as being a mechanism that encodes and transmits genetic information. (101) With this definition in hand, we then seek to find the properties or mechanisms in the reduction base that play this causal role. Whatever it is that encodes and transmits genetic information comprises a realizer of being a gene. Finally, we construct an account that explains how it is that these realizers play the causal role that they do. In explaining how the realizers of being a gene encode and transmit genetic information, we will thereby have constructed an account of how it is that genes encode and transmit genetic information. According to Kim, a physicalist who wishes to respond to the problem of consciousness and the problem of mental causation that is, who is concerned with the mind-body problem ought to invoke functional reductions of the mental to the physical. Consider first the problem of mental causation. If mental properties can be given functional definitions in terms of the physical domain, then mental causation can be 20 As Kim notes, David Chalmers and Joseph Levine both advocate similar methods of functional reduction. See: Joseph Levine, Purple Haze (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) and Chalmers,

25 reductively explained. Take, for example, the mental property being amused. Suppose I want to know how it is that my being amused is causally responsible for my laughing. If we define being amused as having some physical property or other that is apt to trigger smiles or laughter, then we can construct an explanation in terms of this definition; we need only find the realizers of this causal role and explain how it is that they play the role that they do. In doing so, we will have explained how it is that being amused causes laughter. In short, functional definitions allow us to explain the causal relevance of a mental property by appealing to the causal activity of the physical realizers of the functionally reduced mental property. 21 If a mental property is functionally reducible, and if the realizers of that property are causally relevant, then the mental property can itself be deemed causally relevant in virtue of those realizers. Furthermore, according to Kim, only the first step of the threestep process need be completed before we can be justified in ascribing reducibility to a property. That a property is functionalizable that is, that it can be defined in terms of a causal role is necessary and sufficient for functional reducibility. (165) If we wish to claim that we have reduced a property, then we had better find the realizers. However, for reducibility, we need only construct a functional definition. In order to ascribe causal 21 There are some issues here worth considering more carefully. For example, what do we say about the reduced property once the reduction has taken place? Does being amused remain a property in its own right, or is it replaced by the functionally defined, lower level property? On Kim s account, it seems we must conclude either that (a) the reduced mental properties are just a subspecies of physical properties, and functional definitions somehow allow us to see the (already physical) property as it really is, or (b) there are, strictly speaking, no mental properties, but only mental concepts which we took to refer to mental properties but which, ultimately, refer to physical ones. I will discuss this in greater detail later in this chapter. For now it will suffice to note that, according to Kim, the causal activity of the physical realizers of a functionally defined mental property can be invoked to explain the causal relevance of the reduced mental property. 20

26 relevance to a mental property, then, we need only be able to construct a functional definition of that property in terms of the physical domain. 22 Fortunately, Kim notes, we have good reason to believe that intentional and cognitive mental states can be given functional definitions. In support of this claim, Kim offers the following illustration: Consider a population of creatures, or systems, that are functionally and behaviorally indistinguishable from us, and, in general, observationally indistinguishable from us In particular, they exhibit similar linguistic behavior; as far as we can tell, they use language as we do for expressive and communicative purposes. If all this is the case, it would be incoherent to withhold states like belief, desire, knowledge, action, and intention from these creatures. (165) Belief, desire, knowledge, action and intention are, according to Kim, exhaustible by their physical manifestations. If the physical manifestations of these mental states are present, we can conclusively determine that the mental states are present as well; indeed, that is all that we mean when we say that the mental state is present. (As is no doubt clear, Kim is not persuaded of the possibility of a so-called Zombie world. ) 23 Because they are so exhaustible, they can be given definitions in terms of physical realizers. We may not have the realizers in hand at the moment, but we can rest assured that they are in-principle available, and that these mental states are reducible to the physical. In this way, functional reductions can enable the physicalist to offer a plausible response to the problem of mental causation. 22 This, of course, assumes that the realizers of the property will not turn-out to be epiphenomenal physical states. Given the scarcity of epiphenomenal physical states, this seems to be a safe assumption. We could, alternatively, resist ascribing causal relevance to a mental property until after at least some of its (causally active) realizers have been identified. 23 See, for example, his discussion on p27 and p

27 Furthermore, functional reductions enable the physicalist to respond to both the explanatory and the predictive components of the problem of consciousness. 24 Kim offers the following example of a reductive explanation, supposing that pain has been given a functional definition: Why is Jones in pain? Because to be in pain is to be in some state that is apt to be caused by tissue damage and apt for causing winces and groans, and Jones is now in neural state N, which, as it happens, is a state apt to be caused by tissue damage and apt for causing winces and groans. (112) Functional definitions can thus be employed to explain why a subject is in a given mental state at a given time. Once a mental state has been given a functional definition, and one or more of its realizers have been identified, its occurrences can be explained in terms of the occurrences of its physical realizers. Additionally, unlike Kripkean identities, functional definitions can explain why a certain mental state correlates with a particular physical state, and can do so without rendering the question of correlation nonsensical. Again, Kim offers an example: A system, x, is in neural state N at t. Neural state N satisfies causal role C (in systems like x). Having pain = df being in some state satisfying causal role C. Therefore, x is in pain at t. (112) Because pain is not identified with neural state N, there is nothing tautological about saying that every instance of N is an instance of being in pain. The crucial claim of the third premise is that N qualifies, in virtue of the causal role that it plays, as one of the realizers of the concept being in pain; it does not follow that neural state N is pain. By way of analogy, it is not trivial to note that a particular round, heavy rock is a paperweight, even if the rock is seen sitting on my desk on a stack of papers. In doing so, 24 More accurately, functional reductions insofar as they are available can help with both the problem of mental causation and the problem of consciousness. 22

28 we are asserting that this rock is a realizer of paperweight, and is so in virtue of its functional role. For this reason, a functionally reductive explanation of the correlation of a mental state and a neural state need not undermine the validity of asking why the correlation obtains, just as a functional definition of paperweight need not render senseless the question Why is that rock a paperweight?. In contrast to bridge law reductions, functionally reductive explanations also avoid the pitfall of appealing to properties outside of the reduction domain; that is, they can be sufficiently reductive. In evaluating the failure of bridge-laws, Kim formulates the following constraint upon reductive explanations: (R) The explanatory premises of a reductive explanation of a phenomenon involving property F (e.g., an explanation of why F is instantiated on this occasion) must not refer to F. (105) He then goes on to suggest that (R) might be strengthened, so that a reductive explanation of a phenomenon involving F could refer neither to F nor to any phenomenon at the level of F. (106) To see why functionally reductive explanations do not violate either formulation of constraint (R), Kim asks us to note that having pain in the third line of the sample explanation just given does not refer to some mental property, but is instead a definition of the concept being in pain, or the term pain. (111) For this reason, despite initial appearances, a functionally reductive explanation need not appeal to the property that it aims to reduce. 25 It will suffice to mention the term, or concept, that we associate with a higher-level phenomenon, and offer a definition of that term wholly in the language of the reductive base theory. 25 Again, one might wonder whether or not there are mental properties on Kim s account, or if instead there are only these mental concepts which refer to physical properties. This will be discussed in 6 of this chapter. 23

29 Functionally reductive explanations, then, have an advantage over rival physicalist accounts when it comes to closing the explanatory gap. Where Kripkean identities require the physicalist to deny that there ever really was a gap to begin with, functionally reductive explanations offer a solution to the mystery of correlation without denying that there was a mystery to begin with. Similarly, where bridge-law reductions require the physicalist to expand the reductive base to include certain higher-level properties, functional reductions make no such demands. In this way, the physicalist who invokes the functional method of reduction can offer reductive explanations of mental phenomena that are both genuinely reductive and genuinely explanatory. Finally, functional definitions also allow the physicalist to respond to the predictive problem of consciousness. Where Kripkean identities are a posteriori, functional definitions are the result of conceptual analysis, and so are a priori. For this reason, they allow for predictions of unobserved mental states. If pain just means being in a state apt to be caused by tissue damage and apt for causing winces and groans, then we can reasonably conclude that a bat, or a dog, who has experienced tissue damage will also be in pain. If the animal then proceeds to wince and groan, we will have further confirmation of this fact. Given full knowledge of the physical states of a creature, coupled with functional definitions of all known mental states, we can deduce the mental states of that creature. It is important to note that such a process would result in conclusive, and not merely probabilistic, evidence; if we have the correct definition of a mental state, and have identified a physical realizer of that state, we can be certain of the presence of the mental state. By claiming that a functional definition is an adequate one, we are claiming that there is nothing more to the mental state than the functional role detailed in the 24